A Rose for Emily-William Faulkner

  1. When you first read the story, when did you realize how it would end? What is your response to the end?Trace the chronology of the story.
  2. After you read the ending, did your view of earlier scenes change, such as the parts about buying poison and the odor? In retrospect, where are there hints about the plot?
  3. What is the conflict in this story? If Miss Emily is the protagonist, who is the antagonist (a character or force that acts against the protagonist, denying his or her desires)?
  4. In the beginning, Miss Emily receives a deputation from the Board of Aldermen. We already know her attitude toward taxes before this.If this anecdote does not advance the plot or offer a clue to the eventual story of Emily and her lover, what function does it serve in the story?
  5. See question 4. If you are tempted to think of Homer Barron as antagonist, does it matter that the story continues thirty years after his death? (Remember that conflict in stories does not necessarily occur between individuals.)
  6. What people and values does the narrator represent? Does your view of the narrator affect your reception of the story?
  7. In paragraphs 1 and 2, the author speaks of buildings and structures, describing Miss Emily as a fallen monument. Where else do related images occur? If Miss Emily is a fallen monument, what is she a monument to?
  8. In this story, an aristocratic Southerner murders a Yankee carpetbagger. Is the story about the triumph of a defeated South over a supposedly triumphant North? What is this story really about?
  9. What do horse and foot mean in this story? To what or to whom is Miss Emily being compared here?
  10. What is the significance of sidewalks?
  11. What do you think happened when the Baptist minister called on Miss Emily? Is it important that you think you understand what happened?
  12. Why are we not surprised when Homer disappears? How does the storyteller ensure that we are not surprised?
  13. After reading, reconstruct the sequence of events. When did Homer Barron die? How did he die? Why is the story structured in the way that it is?
  14. Why do we need to know about Miss Emily's hair changing color?
  15. What purpose is served by telling us that the Negro "walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again"? And why does the servant disappear after her death?
  16. Toward the end is a lyrical and metaphorical account of the old people's sense of the past, a poetic kind of prose with which a self-indulgent author will sometimes pad out a story or tease us by delaying the resolution of our suspense. What is Faulkner doing here? Playing a trick on us? Does this image present an alternative or parallel to anything else in the story?
  17. Why did they wait until after the funeral to open the closed room? What word in the story informs you about the reasons for this delay? Is the delay consistent with the world of this story?

Barn Burning-William Faulkner

Re-read the story a couple of times, at different sittings; use the following as a guide:

Your goal in this initial re-reading should be to familiarize yourself with the basic facts of the story. As you do this, you should be looking for answers to the following standard analysis:

·  Who is the protagonist of the story?

·  What are the basic features of his situation or predicament?

·  As a part of this: what are the basic cultural norms the character takes for granted, or is asked by others to accept?

·  What are the important conflicts at work in the story?

·  What internal conflicts does the protagonist experience, and do these connect with conflicts between the protagonist and other characters?

·  Where would you locate the climax of the story?

·  What is the point of view from which the story is conveyed?

·  Does the point of view shift in the course of the story?

Your goal for your second read should be to focus on Sarty:

1. How would you describe the conflict he is experiencing?

2. What are the different values to which he seems to be committed? How are these values embodied?

3. What is it about his father that strikes him as admirable, worthy of respect?

4. Look carefully at the two court-session scenes. What is your reaction to the way the two judges act in the respective trials? What standards prompt the first judge's question to the plaintiff at the end of the trial? What standards prompt the plaintiff's decision? How do you feel about their commitment to these principles? How would you assess the judge's decision in the second trial? How do you figure these events have registered with Sarty?

5. After Sarty runs away at the sound of the shots, is there any indication how Sarty will turn out? Will this now virtual orphan end up soundly on his psychological and ethical feet? Or will he be demoralized and destroyed by the trauma of what he has brought about?

For your third read, keep track in the margins of your text of the places where:

1. the narration shifts into what we would understand as the language of his own thoughts (Sarty)

2. the narration renders his experience of something, but the language of the narrator deviates from the kind of vocabulary or syntax that we can regard as Sarty's own

3. the narration departs from Sarty's consciousness, in order

·  to tell us something about the past that Sarty does not know about

·  to tell us something about the future

·  to tell us something that Sarty would have thought or felt if he had known something that he does not know.

4. What factors might have helped determine Faulkner's decision to present the story from this point of view?

Additional Questions:

1. What is at stake in an author's choice of point of view?

2. In reflecting on the story's plot, would you say that Faulkner's initial hook on the reader is by dramatic question, or by dramatic situation?

3. In particular you want to get clear on the difference between the flat/round distinction and the static/dynamic distinction of characterization (in all of our stories, but especially in Barn Burning). And you don't want to be able merely to spot the one or the other: you want to take make what you notice the basis for a further question: so what? How is this decision the right one for the purposes of the story at hand (supposing it is?) Further: supposing this is exactly the right sort of characterization, for this particular figure, in this particular story, does noticing exactly how it is right sharpen our sense of why the story was brought into being and put before us? For example, consider Abner Snopes in a more sympathetic light. What changes? Can it change the impact of the story or character’s depth etc.

Questions adapted from: Baker, Lyman. “Study Guide to William Faulkner’s ‘Barn Burning’.” English 320 9 Nov. 2000. Sept. 2007 <http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english320/sg-Faulkner-BB.htm>.

Questions adapted from: Hanlon Tina Dr., “A Rose for Emily.” Study Questions on American Literature. Ferrum College. 2001. Sept. 2007 < http://www.ferrum.edu/thanlon/StudyQ/>.